24. Sullha
SULLHA
Z ohara arrived at the van wearing a blue dress and a big smile.
"I changed three times," she announced to everyone as she climbed in. "I never knew that having nice things to wear would be so problematic."
"You look lovely," Sullha said, shifting Tomek's backpack higher on her shoulder. He had insisted on bringing the entire box of cars, and those little things were surprisingly heavy.
Karina stood beside the bus wearing a pair of pants and a t-shirt, which were finer than anything she'd ever worn but simple compared to what the others were wearing.
She hadn't said a word since she'd arrived, and Sullha knew better than to try to draw her out.
Karina's silences were not empty. They were full of things she could not say and prodding her would only make her withdraw further into herself.
Hopefully, she would open up in time.
Mirumah came last, her graying hair pinned back in a nice updo and red lipstick on her lips that left the rest of the women gaping.
Sullha had seen the box of face colors in her bathroom vanity. She knew what they were for but had no intention of using them. The only times she'd gotten her face painted were when she'd been summoned to the breeding building, so the association wasn't positive.
"Good morning," Mirumah said as she sat next to Zohara.
"Good morning," Sullha answered, matching her tone because that was what Mirumah needed.
Rohilah sat with Bianca on her lap, and the little girl was chewing on the ear of a stuffed rabbit.
Baruha and Asira were talking in hushed voices about what she planned to tell Camdor, and Leehy sat stoically by the window, looking out at the underground parking garage as if the concrete columns were fascinating.
She could have stayed home, but she'd decided to come, claiming curiosity.
She wanted to see where the Eight were staying.
Leehy didn't look excited or nervous. She just was, and for now, that was enough.
Okidu, who had been standing by the door in his crisp suit and bowing to each woman as she climbed in, got behind the wheel and turned on the engine.
This time when the vehicle entered the elevator that would take it down to the tunnel, they all got to see it. Tomek knelt on his seat so he could press his nose to the glass and watch the exposed cables of the lift.
"Mama, look! We are going down!"
"I can see, sweetie."
When the lift stopped its descent, Okidu drove the van slowly down the platform and into the tunnel. A few minutes into the drive, the windows turned cloudy, and the concrete walls of the tunnel disappeared.
Last time, the windows had gone opaque before the tunnel, and the women had murmured and touched the glass. This time it was no longer a surprise, and no one commented on it.
That was how fast the extraordinary became mundane.
A week ago these women had never ridden in a vehicle.
Now they were accepting all these technological marvels the same way they had once accepted the heat and the gates and the guards that they had lived with their whole lives.
Evidently good things were easy to get used to.
When the windows cleared, the mountains appeared, and they all turned to the glass and watched the scenery roll past. It was green, but not the vivid green of the island, and there were many dry patches. This part of the world was much more arid.
It took quite a while for the mountains to give way to the city.
Tall buildings, rivers of cars, and almost no people on the streets. No one walked. Everyone used cars.
In front of them, she saw Bianca pressing both palms to the window, Rohilah holding her steady and looking over her daughter's head with the same wide-eyed wonder.
This was the world Yaaf had told her about in the enclosure yard, even though he had never been outside the island either. The soldiers were shown movies, which was how he knew what the big cities of the world looked like.
The list she'd made was folded in the pocket of her dress. On one side there were the things she'd collected to tell him about, and the other side contained her questions. But the list was not why her heart was beating so fast.
She just wanted to see him, to stand in front of him and look at his face and have him look back at her. The yearning had been living under her ribs since Safe Harbor, sometimes quiet and sometimes so loud that it was painful.
Three days that felt like three months. It was insane. She shouldn't be missing him so badly.
It took another half hour or so before Okidu drove the van inside one of the very tall buildings, and kept driving down a long spiral until stopping in front of a gate that immediately slid open to let them in.
When the gate closed behind the van, Sullha had a moment of panic, but then she saw that Bowen was waiting for them, and the panic dissipated.
"Welcome to the keep, ladies," he said in the old tongue as they spilled out of the van. "Follow me, please."
They entered through a door that was labeled 'Maintenance.
' The small room led to another door, which Bowen also opened by waving his palm over a small screen.
It opened into a corridor with a bank of elevators, which were big enough for all of them to squeeze in together.
Bianca's rabbit was squashed against Sullha's arm, and the little girl's rapid breathing betrayed how scared she was, but she didn't make a sound.
When the elevator doors opened, they all spilled out, and some of the women let out relieved breaths because riding elevators was new for them and still a little scary.
Bowen led them down a corridor to a set of double doors and pushed them open.
The room was large, and the walls were plain, and there was nothing especially fine about it except a long table by the wall covered end to end with food.
Platters of fruit cut into shapes, small pastries stacked in pyramids, cheeses, breads, and pitchers of juice.
Above the table hung a banner of white cloth with words painted on it in the old language.
'Welcome, family.'
The tables and chairs had been arranged in small islands, clusters of four and five seats angled toward each other, and most of them were plain, but in almost every cluster stood one high-backed chair with legs and arms of carved wood and upholstered in deep red velvet fabric.
Sullha counted seven of them.
She tried to figure out why some chairs were fancy and why there were seven of them among eight groupings.
If they were meant for the soldiers, then they were missing one, and if they were meant for the mothers, then seven were one too many unless they counted her mother as well.
Yaaf's mother had died, and Bardov's mother had been left behind in the enclosure.
Sullha's mother shouldn't have been included in the count because she wasn't related to any of the Eight.
The soldiers stood up all at once, eight bodies rising from their seats like a single wave, and Sullha's eyes went straight to Yaaf, and for a heartbeat there was no one else in the room.
His eyes were so blue, so full of emotion. They spoke such a different language than his body, the language of Yaaf the singular mind, while his body spoke the synchronized language of the collective.
Mesmerized by the intensity of his gaze, Sullha stood in the doorway, and with her stood all the others, looking in but hesitating to enter.
She shook her head to dispel Yaaf's effect on her, took Tomek's hand on one side, her mother's on the other, and walked in.
"Camdor!" Asira flew past Sullha and threw herself at her brother. Camdor caught her, lifting her clean off the floor, and Asira laughed and cried at the same time, her arms locked around his neck.
Baruha followed her daughter, and Camdor freed one arm and gathered his mother into it, bending his head over both of them as if their little family had never been torn apart, as if the years of separation had melted away.
Sullha had to fight back the tears threatening to spill.
Zohara approached Ravsoh with fearful caution, and Ravsoh stood very still, holding his arms at his sides, and for a long moment they just looked at each other, mother and son, and Sullha's chest ached watching them.
Then Zohara said something too quiet to carry, and whatever it was cracked the stillness, and she reached up and took her son's face between her hands, and Ravsoh closed his eyes and let her hold it.
Mirumah walked to her son and stopped at a respectful distance and inclined her head.
"You look well," she said.
"You also look well," Dumuz answered.
They stood facing each other with identical straight spines and identical level chins, their rigid postures mirroring one another, and Sullha could not tell whether the sight was sad or hopeful or both.
Karina and her son did not speak at all. He came to her, and she looked up at him. He took her hands, and Karina's shoulders relaxed a little.
Bardov had no one walking toward him. He stood a half step back, his face unreadable, but then Anita walked up to him, said something, and pointed at the pastries.
Yaaf watched the reunions the same way she did, letting them unfold before crossing the room to her.
"Sullha." He looked at her hands, still clasped with Tomek and Leehy's.
"Yaaf." Sullha looked up into the serious blue eyes that warmed for her the way they warmed for no one else.
"Yaaf!" Tomek pulled his hand from hers and thrust out the other, which was clutching two small toy cars. "I brought my cars." He took off his backpack and handed it to Yaaf. "You can pick yours, and we can race them. Just don't pick the red ones. They are mine."
"Let me see." Yaaf peeked into the open backpack. "So many. I don't know which one to choose. Can you choose for me?"
Tomek took the assignment very seriously, his forehead scrunched as he rummaged through the collection.
"Here." He came up with one gold and one silver car. "These are the nicest. After the red."